Now a 6-part Netflix original mini-series: in Alias Grace, the bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale takes readers into the life of one of the most notorious women of the nineteenth century.It's 1843, and Grace Marks has been convicted for her involvement in the vicious murders of her employer and his housekeeper and mistress. Some believe Grace is innocent; others think her evil or insane. Now serving a life sentence, Grace claims to have no memory of the murders. An up-and-coming expert in the burgeoning field of mental illness is engaged by a group of reformers and spiritualists who seek a pardon for Grace. He listens to her story while bringing her closer and closer to the day she cannot remember. What will he find in attempting to unlock her memories? Captivating and disturbing, Alias Grace showcases bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author Margaret Atwood at the peak of her powers.
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9780385490443
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Paperback
Americanah
By Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi
Separated by respective ambitions after falling in love in occupied Nigeria, beautiful Ifemelu experiences triumph and defeat in America while exploring new concepts of race, while Obinze endures an undocumented status in London until the pair is reunited in their homeland 15 years later, where they face the toughest decisions of their lives. By the award-winning author of Half of a Yellow Sun.
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1410486133
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Large Print Hardcover
And Then There Were None LP
By Christie, Agatha
A PBS Great American Read Top 100 PickOne of the most famous and beloved mysteries from The Queen of Suspense - Agatha Christie - now a Lifetime TV movie."Ten . . ."Ten strangers are lured to an isolated island mansion off the Devon coast by a mysterious "U. N. Owen.""Nine . . ."At dinner a recorded message accuses each of them in turn of having a guilty secret, and by the end of the night one of the guests is dead."Eight . . ."Stranded by a violent storm, and haunted by a nursery rhyme counting down one by one . . . as one by one . . . they begin to die."Seven . . ."Which among them is the killer and will any of them survive?
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9780062081520
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Large Print
Angel Time
By Rice, Anne
Anne Rice returns to the mesmerizing storytelling that has captivated readers for more than three decades in a tale of unceasing suspense set in time past - a metaphysical thriller about angels and assassins.The novel opens in the present. At its center: Toby O'Dare - a contract killer of underground fame on assignment to kill once again. A soulless soul, a dead man walking, he lives under a series of aliases - just now: Lucky the Fox - and takes his orders from "The Right Man."Into O'Dare's nightmarish world of lone and lethal missions comes a mysterious stranger, a seraph, who offers him a chance to save rather than destroy lives. O'Dare, who long ago dreamt of being a priest but instead came to embody danger and violence, seizes his chance.
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9781400043538
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Print book
Ariel
By Plath, Sylvia
Sylvia Plath's famous collection, as she intended it.When Sylvia Plath died, she not only left behind a prolific life but also her unpublished literary masterpiece, Ariel. When her husband, Ted Hughes, first brought this collection to life, it garnered worldwide acclaim, though it wasn't the draft Sylvia had wanted her readers to see. This facsimile edition restores, for the first time, Plath's original manuscript - including handwritten notes - and her own selection and arrangement of poems. This edition also includes in facsimile the complete working drafts of her poem "Ariel," which provide a rare glimpse into the creative process of a beloved writer. This publication introduces a truer version of Plath's works, and will no doubt alter her legacy forever.
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60732598
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Hardcover
The Bees
By Paull, Laline
The Handmaid's Tale meets The Hunger Games in this brilliantly imagined debut.
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9781410472083
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Hardcover
Binti
By Okorafor, Nnedi
"Prepare to fall in love with Binti." -- Neil GaimanWinner of the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award for Best Novella!Her name is Binti, and she is the first of the Himba people ever to be offered a place at Oomza University, the finest institution of higher learning in the galaxy. But to accept the offer will mean giving up her place in her family to travel between the stars among strangers who do not share her ways or respect her customs.Knowledge comes at a cost, one that Binti is willing to pay, but her journey will not be easy. The world she seeks to enter has long warred with the Meduse, an alien race that has become the stuff of nightmares. Oomza University has wronged the Meduse, and Binti's stellar travel will bring her within their deadly reach.If Binti hopes to survive the legacy of a war not of her making, she will need both the gifts of her people and the wisdom enshrined within the University, itself -- but first she has to make it there, alive.The Binti SeriesBook 1: BintiBook 2: Binti: HomeBook 3: Binti: The Night MasqueradePRAISE FOR BINTI"Binti is a supreme read about a sexy, edgy Afropolitan in space! It's a wondrous combination of extra-terrestrial adventure and age-old African diplomacy. Unforgettable!" -- Wanuri Kahiu, award-winning Kenyan film director of Punzi and From a Whisper
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9780765385253
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Paperback
Black Sun
By Roanhorse, Rebecca
From the New York Times bestselling author of Star Wars: Resistance Reborn comes the first book in the Between Earth and Sky trilogy, inspired by the civilizations of the Pre-Columbian Americas and woven into a tale of celestial prophecies, political intrigue, and forbidden magic.A god will return When the earth and sky converge Under the black sun In the holy city of Tova, the winter solstice is usually a time for celebration and renewal, but this year it coincides with a solar eclipse, a rare celestial event proscribed by the Sun Priest as an unbalancing of the world. Meanwhile, a ship launches from a distant city bound for Tova and set to arrive on the solstice. The captain of the ship, Xiala, is a disgraced Teek whose song can calm the waters around her as easily as it can warp a man's mind.
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9781534437678
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Hardcover
The Casual Vacancy
By Rowling, J. K.
A big novel about a small town...When Barry Fairbrother dies in his early forties, the town of Pagford is left in shock.Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty faade is a town at war.Rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupils...Pagford is not what it first seems.And the empty seat left by Barry on the parish council soon becomes the catalyst for the biggest war the town has yet seen. Who will triumph in an election fraught with passion, duplicity, and unexpected revelationsA big novel about a small town, The Casual Vacancy is J.K. Rowling's first novel for adults. It is the work of a storyteller like no other.
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9780316228589
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Paperback
The Complete Poetry
By Angelou, Maya
The beauty and spirit of Maya Angelous words live on in this complete collection of poetry, including her inaugural poem "On the Pulse of Morning". Throughout her illustrious career in letters, Maya Angelou gifted, healed, and inspired the world with her words. Now the beauty and spirit of those words live on in this new and complete collection of poetry that reflects and honors the writers remarkable life. Every poetic phrase, every poignant verse can be found within the pages of this sure-to-be-treasured volume - from her reflections on African American life and hardship in the compilation Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water fore I Diiie ("Though theres one thing that I cry for / I believe enough to die for / That is every mans responsibility to man") to her revolutionary celebrations of womanhood in the poem "Still I Rise"("Out of the huts of historys shame / I rise / Up from a past thats rooted in pain / I rise") to her "On the Pulse of Morning"tribute at President William Jefferson Clintons inauguration ("Lift up your eyes upon / The day breaking for you. / Give birth again / To the dream.") . Maya Angelou: The Complete Poetry also features her final long-form poems, including "A Brave and Startling Truth," "Amazing Peace," "His Day Is Done," and the honest and endearing Mother: "I feared if I let you go You would leave me eternally. You smiled at my fears, saying I could not stay in your lap forever" This collection also includes the never-before-published poem "Amazement Awaits," commissioned for the 2008 Olympic Games: "We are here at the portal of the world we had wished for At the lintel of the world we most need. We are here roaring and singing. We prove that we can not only make peace, we can bring it with us." Timeless and prescient, this definitive compendium will warm the hearts of Maya Angelous most ardent admirers as it introduces new readers to the legendary poet, activist, and teacher - a phenomenal woman for the ages.
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9780812997873
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Hardcover
Fun Home
By Bechdel, Alison
A fresh and brilliantly told memoir from a cult favorite comic artist, marked by gothic twists, a family funeral home, sexual angst, and great books. This breakout book by Alison Bechdel is a darkly funny family tale, pitch-perfectly illustrated with Bechdel's sweetly gothic drawings. Like Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, it's a story exhilaratingly suited to graphic memoir form. Meet Alison's father, a historic preservation expert and obsessive restorer of the family's Victorian home, a third-generation funeral home director, a high school English teacher, an icily distant parent, and a closeted homosexual who, as it turns out, is involved with his male students and a family babysitter. Through narrative that is alternately heartbreaking and fiercely funny, we are drawn into a daughter's complex yearning for her father. And yet, apart from assigned stints dusting caskets at the family-owned "fun home," as Alison and her brothers call it, the relationship achieves its most intimate expression through the shared code of books. When Alison comes out as homosexual herself in late adolescense, the denouement is swift, graphic -- and redemptive.
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9780618871711
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Paperback
Gathering Blossoms Under Fire
By Walker, Alice
From National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker and edited by critic and writer Valerie Boyd, comes an unprecedented compilation of Walker's fifty years of journals drawing an intimate portrait of her development over five decades as an artist, human rights
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1476773157
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House of Earth and Blood
By Maas, Sarah J.
Bryce Quinlan had the perfect life -- working hard all day and partying all night -- until a demon murdered her closest friends, leaving her bereft, wounded, and alone. When the accused is behind bars but the crimes start up again, Bryce finds herself at the heart o
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1635574048
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Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell
By Clarke, Susanna
The international bestseller, finally in paperback!Time magazine's #1 book of the year 11 weeks and counting on the New York Times bestseller list Shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award Longlisted for the Booker prize A Book Sense pick People Top Ten Books of the year Salon.com Top Ten of 2004 New York Times Notable Books of the Year Christian Science Monitor Best Fiction 2004 Nancy Pearl's Top 12 Books of 2004 Washington Post Book World Best of 2004 San Francisco Chronicle Best Books of 2004 Chicago Tribune Best of 2004 Seattle Times 25 Best Books of 2004 Atlanta Journal-Constitution Top 12 Books of 2004 Village Voice "Top Shelf" Raleigh News & Observer Best of 2004 Rocky Mountain News critics' favorites of 2004 Kansas City Star 100 Noteworthy Books of 2004 Fort Worth Star-Telegram 10 Best Books of 2004 Hartford Courant Best Books of 2004 Susanna Clarke's brilliant first novel is an utterly compelling epic tale of nineteenth-century England and the two very different magicians who, as teacher and pupil and then as rivals, emerge to change its history.
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9781582346038
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Paperback
Lady Susan.
By Austen, Jane
A collection of three lesser-known works by one of the nineteenth century's greatest authorsThese three short works show Austen experimenting with a variety of different literary styles, from melodrama to satire, and exploring a range of social classes and settings. The early epistolary novel Lady Susan depicts an unscrupulous coquette, toying with the affections of several men. In contrast, The Watsons is a delightful fragment, whose spirited heroine - Emma - finds her marriage opportunities limited by poverty and pride. Meanwhile Sanditon, set in a seaside resort, offers a glorious cast of hypochondriacs and spectators, treated by Austen with both amusement and scepticism.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world.
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9780140431025
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Book
Leadership in Turbulent Times
By Goodwin, Doris Kearns
In this culmination of five decades of acclaimed studies in presidential history, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Doris Kearns Goodwin offers an illuminating exploration of the early development, growth, and exercise of leadership.Are leaders born or made? Where does ambition come from? How does adversity affect the growth of leadership? Does the leader make the times or do the times make the leader? In Leadership, Goodwin draws upon the four presidents she has studied most closely - Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Lyndon B. Johnson (in civil rights) - to show how they recognized leadership qualities within themselves and were recognized as leaders by others. By looking back to their first entries into public life, we encounter them at a time when their paths were filled with confusion, fear, and hope. Leadership tells the story of how they all collided with dramatic reversals that disrupted their lives and threatened to shatter forever their ambitions. Nonetheless, they all emerged fitted to confront the contours and dilemmas of their times. No common pattern describes the trajectory of leadership. Although set apart in background, abilities, and temperament, these men shared a fierce ambition and a deep-seated resilience that enabled them to surmount uncommon hardships. At their best, all four were guided by a sense of moral purpose. At moments of great challenge, they were able to summon their talents to enlarge the opportunities and lives of others. This seminal work provides an accessible and essential road map for aspiring and established leaders in every field. In today's polarized world, these stories of authentic leadership in times of apprehension and fracture take on a singular urgency.
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9781476795928
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Hardcover
Mad Honey
By Picoult, Jodi
A soul-stirring novel about what we choose to keep from our past and what we choose to leave behind, from the New York Times bestselling author of Wish You Were Here and the bestselling author of She's Not ThereOlivia McAfee knows what it feels like to start over. Her picture-perfect life - living in Boston, married to a brilliant cardiothoracic surgeon, raising their beautiful son, Asher - was upended when her husband revealed a darker side. She never imagined that she would end up back in her sleepy New Hampshire hometown, living in the house she grew up in and taking over her father's beekeeping business. Lily Campanello is familiar with do-overs, too. When she and her mom relocate to Adams, New Hampshire, for her final year of high school, they both hope it will be a fresh start.
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9781984818386
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Hardcover
The Measure of Our Lives
By Morrison, Toni
At once the ideal introduction to Toni Morrison and a lovely and moving keepsake for her devoted readers: a treasury of quotations from her work. With a foreword by Zadie Smith."She was our conscience. Our seer. Our truthteller." --Oprah WinfreyThis inspirational book juxtaposes quotations, one to a page, drawn from Toni Morrison's entire body of work, both fiction and nonfiction--from The Bluest Eye to God Help the Child, from Playing in the Dark to The Source of Self-Regard--to tell a story of self-actualization. It aims to evoke the totality of Toni Morrison's literary vision. Its compelling sequence of flashes of revelation--stunning for their linguistic originality, keenness of psychological observation, and philosophical profundity--addresses issues of abiding interest in Morrison's work: the reach of language for the ineffable; transcendence through imagination; the self and its discontents; the vicissitudes of love; the whirligig of memory; the singular power of women; the original American sin of slavery; the bankruptcy of racial oppression; the complex humanity and art of black people. The Measure of Our Lives brims with elegance of style and mind and moral authority.
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9780525659297
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Hardcover
Mexican Gothic
By Moreno-garcia, Silvia
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * "Its Lovecraft meets the Brontes in Latin America, and after a slow-burn start Mexican Gothic gets seriously weird." - The Guardian ONE OF TIMES 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME * WINNER OF THE LOCUS AWARD * NOMINATED FOR THE BRAM STOKER AWARD . ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, NPR, The Washington Post, Tordotcom, Marie Claire, Vox, Mashable, Mens Health, Library Journal, Book Riot, LibraryReads An isolated mansion. A chillingly charismatic aristocrat. And a brave socialite drawn to expose their treacherous secrets. . . . From the author of Gods of Jade and Shadow comes "a terrifying twist on classic gothic horror" (Kirkus Reviews) set in glamorous 1950s Mexico.. After receiving a frantic letter from her newly-wed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom, Noemà Taboada heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside. Shes not sure what she will find - her cousins husband, a handsome Englishman, is a stranger, and Noemà knows little about the region. Noemà is also an unlikely rescuer: Shes a glamorous debutante, and her chic gowns and perfect red lipstick are more suited for cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing. But shes also tough and smart, with an indomitable will, and she is not afraid: Not of her cousins new husband, who is both menacing and alluring; not of his father, the ancient patriarch who seems to be fascinated by NoemÃ; and not even of the house itself, which begins to invade Noemis dreams with visions of blood and doom. Her only ally in this inhospitable abode is the familys youngest son. Shy and gentle, he seems to want to help NoemÃ, but might also be hiding dark knowledge of his familys past. For there are many secrets behind the walls of High Place. The familys once colossal wealth and faded mining empire kept them from prying eyes, but as Noemà digs deeper she unearths stories of violence and madness. And NoemÃ, mesmerized by the terrifying yet seductive world of High Place, may soon find it impossible to ever leave this enigmatic house behind.. "Its as if a supernatural power compels us to turn the pages of the gripping Mexican Gothic." - The Washington Post. "Mexican Gothic is the perfect summer horror read, and marks Moreno-Garcia with her hypnotic and engaging prose as one of the genres most exciting talents." - Nerdist. "A period thriller as rich in suspense as it is in lush 50s atmosphere." - Entertainment Weekly
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9780525620785
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Hardcover
Mrs. Dalloway
By Virginia, Woolf,
Mrs. Dalloway chronicles a June day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway-a day that is taken up with running minor errands in preparation for a party and that is punctuated, toward the end, by the suicide of a young man she has never met. In giving an apparently ordi
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679420428
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My Life as a Rat
By Oates, Joyce Carol
"A painful truth of family life: the most tender emotions can change in an instant. You think your parents love you but is it you they love, or the child who is theirs?" --Joyce Carol Oates, My Life as a RatWhich should prevail: loyalty to family or loyalty to the truth? Is telling the truth ever a mistake and is lying for one's family ever justified? Can one do the right thing, but bitterly regret it? My Life as a Rat follows Violet Rue Kerrigan, a young woman who looks back upon her life in exile from her family following her testimony, at age twelve, concerning what she knew to be the racist murder of an African-American boy by her older brothers. In a succession of vividly recalled episodes Violet contemplates the circumstances of her life as the initially beloved youngest child of seven Kerrigan children who inadvertently "informs" on her brothers, setting into motion their arrests and convictions and her own long estrangement. Arresting and poignant, My Life as a Rat traces a life of banishment from a family - banishment from parents, siblings, and the Church - that forces Violet to discover her own identity, to break the powerful spell of family, and to emerge from her long exile as a "rat" into a transformed life.
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9780062899835
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Hardcover
The New Annotated Frankenstein
By Shelley, Mary
Two centuries after its original publication, Mary Shelley's classic tale of gothic horror comes to vivid life in "what may very well be the best presentation of the novel" to date (Guillermo del Toro) ."Remarkably, a nineteen-year-old, writing her first novel, penned a tale that combines tragedy, morality, social commentary, and a thoughtful examination of the very nature of knowledge," writes best-selling author Leslie S. Klinger in his foreword to The New Annotated Frankenstein. Despite its undeniable status as one of the most influential works of fiction ever written, Mary Shelley's novel is often reductively dismissed as the wellspring for tacky monster films or as a cautionary tale about experimental science gone haywire. Now, two centuries after the first publication of Frankenstein, Klinger revives Shelley's gothic masterpiece by reproducing her original text with the most lavishly illustrated and comprehensively annotated edition to date.Featuring over 200 illustrations and nearly 1,000 annotations, this sumptuous volume recaptures Shelley's early nineteenth-century world with historical precision and imaginative breadth, tracing the social and political roots of the author's revolutionary brand of Romanticism. Braiding together decades of scholarship with his own keen insights, Klinger recounts Frankenstein's indelible contributions to the realms of science fiction, feminist theory, and modern intellectual history -- not to mention film history and popular culture. The result of Klinger's exhaustive research is a multifaceted portrait of one of Western literature's most divinely gifted prodigies, a young novelist who defied her era's restrictions on female ambitions by independently supporting herself and her children as a writer and editor.Born in a world of men in the midst of a political and an emerging industrial revolution, Shelley crafted a horror story that, beyond its incisive commentary on her own milieu, is widely recognized as the first work of science fiction. The daughter of a pioneering feminist and an Enlightenment philosopher, Shelley lived and wrote at the center of British Romanticism, the "exuberant, young movement" that rebelled against tradition and reason and "with a rebellious scream gave birth to a world of gods and monsters" (del Toro) .Following his best-selling The New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft and The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, Klinger not only considers Shelley's original 1818 text but, for the first time in any annotated volume, traces the effects of her significant revisions in the 1823 and 1831 editions. With an afterword by renowned literary scholar Anne K. Mellor, The New Annotated Frankenstein celebrates the prescient genius and undying legacy of the world's "first truly modern myth."The New Annotated Frankenstein includes:Nearly 1,000 notes that provide information and historical context on every aspect of Frankenstein and of Mary Shelley's lifeOver 200 illustrations, including original artwork from the 1831 edition and dozens of photographs of real-world locations that appear in the novelExtensive listings of films and theatrical adaptationsAn introduction by Guillermo del Toro and an afterword by Anne K. Mellor 250 color and black-and-white illustrations
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9780871409492
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Hardcover
The Night Watchman
By Erdrich, Louise
Based on the extraordinary life of National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich's grandfather who worked as a night watchman and carried the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota all the way to Washington, D.C., this powerful novel explores themes of love and death with lightness and gravity and unfolds with the elegant prose, sly humor, and depth of feeling of a master craftsman.Thomas Wazhashk is the night watchman at the jewel bearing plant, the first factory located near the Turtle Mountain Reservation in rural North Dakota. He is also a Chippewa Council member who is trying to understand the consequences of a new "emancipation" bill on its way to the floor of the United States Congress. It is 1953 and he and the other council members know the bill isn't about freedom; Congress is fed up with Indians. The bill is a "termination" that threatens the rights of Native Americans to their land and their very identity. How can the government abandon treaties made in good faith with Native Americans "for as long as the grasses shall grow, and the rivers run"?Since graduating high school, Pixie Paranteau has insisted that everyone call her Patrice. Unlike most of the girls on the reservation, Patrice, the class valedictorian, has no desire to wear herself down with a husband and kids. She makes jewel bearings at the plant, a job that barely pays her enough to support her mother and brother. Patrice's shameful alcoholic father returns home sporadically to terrorize his wife and children and bully her for money. But Patrice needs every penny to follow her beloved older sister, Vera, who moved to the big city of Minneapolis. Vera may have disappeared; she hasn't been in touch in months, and is rumored to have had a baby. Determined to find Vera and her child, Patrice makes a fateful trip to Minnesota that introduces her to unexpected forms of exploitation and violence, and endangers her life.Thomas and Patrice live in this impoverished reservation community along with young Chippewa boxer Wood Mountain and his mother Juggie Blue, her niece and Patrice's best friend Valentine, and Stack Barnes, the white high school math teacher and boxing coach who is hopelessly in love with Patrice. In the Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich creates a fictional world populated with memorable characters who are forced to grapple with the worst and best impulses of human nature. Illuminating the loves and lives, the desires and ambitions of these characters with compassion, wit, and intelligence, The Night Watchman is a majestic work of fiction from this revered cultural treasure.
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9780062671189
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Hardcover
Parable of the Sower
By Butler, Octavia E.
When unattended environmental and economic crises lead to social chaos, not even gated communities are safe. In a night of fire and death Lauren Olamina, a minister's young daughter, loses her family and home and ventures out into the unprotected American landscape. But what begins as a flight for survival soon leads to something much more: a startling vision of human destiny... and the birth of a new faith.
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9780446675505
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Paperback
Play It As It Lays
By Didion, Joan
A ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, Play It as It Lays captures the mood of an entire generation, the ennui of contemporary society reflected in spare prose that blisters and haunts the reader. Set in a place beyond good and evil-literally in Hollywood, Las Vegas, and the barren wastes of the Mojave Desert, but figuratively in the landscape of an arid soul-it remains more than three decades after its original publication a profoundly disturbing novel, riveting in its exploration of a woman and a society in crisis and stunning in the still-startling intensity of its prose.
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374529949
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Paperback
The Secret History
By Tartt, Donna
Donna Tartt, winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for her most recent novel, The Goldfinch, established herself as a major talent with The SecretHistory, which has become a contemporary classic.Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality their lives are changed profoundly and forever, and they discover how hard it can be to truly live and how easy it is to kill.
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9781400031702
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Paperback
Shirley Jackson
By Jackson, Shirley
"The world of Shirley Jackson is eerie and unforgettable," writes A. M. Homes. "It is a place where things are not what they seem; even on a morning that is sunny and clear there is always the threat of darkness looming, of things taking a turn for the worse." Jackson's characters-mostly unloved daughters in search of a home, a career, a family of their own-chase what appears to be a harmless dream until, without warning, it turns on its heel to seize them by the throat. We are moved by these characters' dreams, for they are the dreams of love and acceptance shared by us all. We are shocked when their dreams become nightmares, and terrified by Jackson's suggestion that there are unseen powers-"demons" both subconscious and supernatural-malevolently conspiring against human happiness.
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9781598530728
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Hardcover
The Soul of a Woman
By Allende, Isabel
"When I say that I was a feminist in kindergarten, I am not exaggerating," begins Isabel Allende. As a child, she watched her mother, abandoned by her husband, provide for her three small children without "resources or voice." Isabel became a fierce and defiant little girl, determined to fight for the life her mother couldn't have.As a young woman coming of age in the late 1960s, she rode the second wave of feminism. Among a tribe of like-minded female journalists, Allende for the first time felt comfortable in her own skin, as they wrote "with a knife between our teeth" about women's issues. She has seen what the movement has accomplished in the course of her lifetime. And over the course of three passionate marriages, she has learned how to grow as a woman while having a partner, when to step away, and the rewards of embracing one's sexuality.
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9780593355626
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Hardcover
Sundial
By Ward, Catriona
"DO NOT MISS THIS BOOK. Authentically terrifying." - Stephen King A LibraryReads Top 10 Pick! STARRED review from Publishers Weekly! Anticipated and Recommended by Bustle, USA Today, CNN, i09, The Nerd Daily, LitReactor, GoodReads, LitHub, and more!Sundial is a new, twi
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1250812682
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Their Eyes Were Watching God
By Hurston, Zora Neale
“A deeply soulful novel that comprehends love and cruelty, and separates the big people from the small of heart, without ever losing sympathy for those unfortunates who don’t know how to live properly.” —Zadie SmithOne of the most important and enduring books of the twentieth century, Their Eyes Were Watching God brings to life a Southern love story with the wit and pathos found only in the writing of Zora Neale Hurston. Out of print for almost thirty years—due largely to initial audiences’ rejection of its strong black female protagonist—Hurston’s classic has since its 1978 reissue become perhaps the most widely read and highly acclaimed novel in the canon of African-American literature.
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60838671
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Paperback
To Paradise
By Yanagihara, Hanya
From the author of the classic A Little Life - a bold, brilliant novel spanning three centuries and three different versions of the American experiment, about lovers, family, loss and the elusive promise of utopia.In an alternate version of 1893 America, New York is part of
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385547935
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Where the Past Begins
By Tan, Amy
FROM NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR AMY TAN, A MEMOIR ON HER LIFE AS A WRITER, HER CHILDHOOD, AND THE SYMBIOTIC RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FICTION AND EMOTIONAL MEMORYIn Where the Past Begins, bestselling author of The Joy Luck Club and The Valley of Amazement Amy Tan is at her most intimate in revealing the truths and inspirations that underlie her extraordinary fiction. By delving into vivid memories of her traumatic childhood, confessions of self-doubt in her journals, and heartbreaking letters to and from her mother, she gives evidence to all that made it both unlikely and inevitable that she would become a writer. Through spontaneous storytelling, she shows how a fluid fictional state of mind unleashed near-forgotten memories that became the emotional nucleus of her novels. Tan explores shocking truths uncovered by family memorabilia - the real reason behind an IQ test she took at age six, why her parents lied about their education, mysteries surrounding her maternal grandmother - and, for the first time publicly, writes about her complex relationship with her father, who died when she was fifteen. Supplied with candor and characteristic humor, Where the Past Begins takes readers into the idiosyncratic workings of her writer's mind, a journey that explores memory, imagination, and truth, with fiction serving as both her divining rod and link to meaning.
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9780062319296
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Hardcover
Whereabouts
By Lahiri, Jhumpa
Exuberance and dread, attachment and estrangement: in this novel, Jhumpa Lahiri stretches her themes to the limit. The woman at the center wavers between stasis and movement, between the need to belong and the refusal to form lasting ties. The city she calls home, an engaging backdrop to her days, acts as a confidant: the sidewalks around her house, parks, bridges, piazzas, streets, stores, coffee bars. We follow her to the pool she frequents and to the train station that sometimes leads her to her mother, mired in a desperate solitude after her father's untimely death. In addition to colleagues at work, where she never quite feels at ease, she has girl friends, guy friends, and "him," a shadow who both consoles and unsettles her. But in the arc of a year, as one season gives way to the next, transformation awaits.
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9780593318317
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Hardcover
Wolf Hall
By Mantel, Hilary
In the ruthless arena of King Henry VIII's court, only one man dares to gamble his life to win the king's favor and ascend to the heights of political powerEngland in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years, and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe opposes him. The quest for the king's freedom destroys his adviser, the brilliant Cardinal Wolsey, and leaves a power vacuum. Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell. Cromwell is a wholly original man, a charmer and a bully, both idealist and opportunist, astute in reading people and a demon of energy: he is also a consummate politician, hardened by his personal losses, implacable in his ambition. But Henry is volatile: one day tender, one day murderous. Cromwell helps him break the opposition, but what will be the price of his triumph? In inimitable style, Hilary Mantel presents a picture of a half-made society on the cusp of change, where individuals fight or embrace their fate with passion and courage. With a vast array of characters, overflowing with incident, the novel re-creates an era when the personal and political are separated by a hairbreadth, where success brings unlimited power but a single failure means death.
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9780805080681
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Hardcover
Yellowface
By Kuang, R. F
White lies. Dark humor. Deadly consequences ... Bestselling sensation Juniper Song is not who she says she is, she didn't write the book she claims she wrote, and she is most certainly not Asian American - in this chilling and hilariously cutting novel from R.F. Kuang, the #1 New
Alias Grace
By Atwood, Margaret
Now a 6-part Netflix original mini-series: in Alias Grace, the bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale takes readers into the life of one of the most notorious women of the nineteenth century.It's 1843, and Grace Marks has been convicted for her involvement in the vicious murders of her employer and his housekeeper and mistress. Some believe Grace is innocent; others think her evil or insane. Now serving a life sentence, Grace claims to have no memory of the murders. An up-and-coming expert in the burgeoning field of mental illness is engaged by a group of reformers and spiritualists who seek a pardon for Grace. He listens to her story while bringing her closer and closer to the day she cannot remember. What will he find in attempting to unlock her memories? Captivating and disturbing, Alias Grace showcases bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author Margaret Atwood at the peak of her powers.
Americanah
By Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi
Separated by respective ambitions after falling in love in occupied Nigeria, beautiful Ifemelu experiences triumph and defeat in America while exploring new concepts of race, while Obinze endures an undocumented status in London until the pair is reunited in their homeland 15 years later, where they face the toughest decisions of their lives. By the award-winning author of Half of a Yellow Sun.
And Then There Were None LP
By Christie, Agatha
A PBS Great American Read Top 100 PickOne of the most famous and beloved mysteries from The Queen of Suspense - Agatha Christie - now a Lifetime TV movie."Ten . . ."Ten strangers are lured to an isolated island mansion off the Devon coast by a mysterious "U. N. Owen.""Nine . . ."At dinner a recorded message accuses each of them in turn of having a guilty secret, and by the end of the night one of the guests is dead."Eight . . ."Stranded by a violent storm, and haunted by a nursery rhyme counting down one by one . . . as one by one . . . they begin to die."Seven . . ."Which among them is the killer and will any of them survive?
Angel Time
By Rice, Anne
Anne Rice returns to the mesmerizing storytelling that has captivated readers for more than three decades in a tale of unceasing suspense set in time past - a metaphysical thriller about angels and assassins.The novel opens in the present. At its center: Toby O'Dare - a contract killer of underground fame on assignment to kill once again. A soulless soul, a dead man walking, he lives under a series of aliases - just now: Lucky the Fox - and takes his orders from "The Right Man."Into O'Dare's nightmarish world of lone and lethal missions comes a mysterious stranger, a seraph, who offers him a chance to save rather than destroy lives. O'Dare, who long ago dreamt of being a priest but instead came to embody danger and violence, seizes his chance.
Ariel
By Plath, Sylvia
Sylvia Plath's famous collection, as she intended it.When Sylvia Plath died, she not only left behind a prolific life but also her unpublished literary masterpiece, Ariel. When her husband, Ted Hughes, first brought this collection to life, it garnered worldwide acclaim, though it wasn't the draft Sylvia had wanted her readers to see. This facsimile edition restores, for the first time, Plath's original manuscript - including handwritten notes - and her own selection and arrangement of poems. This edition also includes in facsimile the complete working drafts of her poem "Ariel," which provide a rare glimpse into the creative process of a beloved writer. This publication introduces a truer version of Plath's works, and will no doubt alter her legacy forever.
The Bees
By Paull, Laline
The Handmaid's Tale meets The Hunger Games in this brilliantly imagined debut.
Binti
By Okorafor, Nnedi
"Prepare to fall in love with Binti." -- Neil GaimanWinner of the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award for Best Novella!Her name is Binti, and she is the first of the Himba people ever to be offered a place at Oomza University, the finest institution of higher learning in the galaxy. But to accept the offer will mean giving up her place in her family to travel between the stars among strangers who do not share her ways or respect her customs.Knowledge comes at a cost, one that Binti is willing to pay, but her journey will not be easy. The world she seeks to enter has long warred with the Meduse, an alien race that has become the stuff of nightmares. Oomza University has wronged the Meduse, and Binti's stellar travel will bring her within their deadly reach.If Binti hopes to survive the legacy of a war not of her making, she will need both the gifts of her people and the wisdom enshrined within the University, itself -- but first she has to make it there, alive.The Binti SeriesBook 1: BintiBook 2: Binti: HomeBook 3: Binti: The Night MasqueradePRAISE FOR BINTI"Binti is a supreme read about a sexy, edgy Afropolitan in space! It's a wondrous combination of extra-terrestrial adventure and age-old African diplomacy. Unforgettable!" -- Wanuri Kahiu, award-winning Kenyan film director of Punzi and From a Whisper
Black Sun
By Roanhorse, Rebecca
From the New York Times bestselling author of Star Wars: Resistance Reborn comes the first book in the Between Earth and Sky trilogy, inspired by the civilizations of the Pre-Columbian Americas and woven into a tale of celestial prophecies, political intrigue, and forbidden magic.A god will return When the earth and sky converge Under the black sun In the holy city of Tova, the winter solstice is usually a time for celebration and renewal, but this year it coincides with a solar eclipse, a rare celestial event proscribed by the Sun Priest as an unbalancing of the world. Meanwhile, a ship launches from a distant city bound for Tova and set to arrive on the solstice. The captain of the ship, Xiala, is a disgraced Teek whose song can calm the waters around her as easily as it can warp a man's mind.
The Casual Vacancy
By Rowling, J. K.
A big novel about a small town...When Barry Fairbrother dies in his early forties, the town of Pagford is left in shock.Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty faade is a town at war.Rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupils...Pagford is not what it first seems.And the empty seat left by Barry on the parish council soon becomes the catalyst for the biggest war the town has yet seen. Who will triumph in an election fraught with passion, duplicity, and unexpected revelationsA big novel about a small town, The Casual Vacancy is J.K. Rowling's first novel for adults. It is the work of a storyteller like no other.
The Complete Poetry
By Angelou, Maya
The beauty and spirit of Maya Angelous words live on in this complete collection of poetry, including her inaugural poem "On the Pulse of Morning". Throughout her illustrious career in letters, Maya Angelou gifted, healed, and inspired the world with her words. Now the beauty and spirit of those words live on in this new and complete collection of poetry that reflects and honors the writers remarkable life. Every poetic phrase, every poignant verse can be found within the pages of this sure-to-be-treasured volume - from her reflections on African American life and hardship in the compilation Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water fore I Diiie ("Though theres one thing that I cry for / I believe enough to die for / That is every mans responsibility to man") to her revolutionary celebrations of womanhood in the poem "Still I Rise"("Out of the huts of historys shame / I rise / Up from a past thats rooted in pain / I rise") to her "On the Pulse of Morning"tribute at President William Jefferson Clintons inauguration ("Lift up your eyes upon / The day breaking for you. / Give birth again / To the dream.") . Maya Angelou: The Complete Poetry also features her final long-form poems, including "A Brave and Startling Truth," "Amazing Peace," "His Day Is Done," and the honest and endearing Mother: "I feared if I let you go You would leave me eternally. You smiled at my fears, saying I could not stay in your lap forever" This collection also includes the never-before-published poem "Amazement Awaits," commissioned for the 2008 Olympic Games: "We are here at the portal of the world we had wished for At the lintel of the world we most need. We are here roaring and singing. We prove that we can not only make peace, we can bring it with us." Timeless and prescient, this definitive compendium will warm the hearts of Maya Angelous most ardent admirers as it introduces new readers to the legendary poet, activist, and teacher - a phenomenal woman for the ages.
Fun Home
By Bechdel, Alison
A fresh and brilliantly told memoir from a cult favorite comic artist, marked by gothic twists, a family funeral home, sexual angst, and great books. This breakout book by Alison Bechdel is a darkly funny family tale, pitch-perfectly illustrated with Bechdel's sweetly gothic drawings. Like Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, it's a story exhilaratingly suited to graphic memoir form. Meet Alison's father, a historic preservation expert and obsessive restorer of the family's Victorian home, a third-generation funeral home director, a high school English teacher, an icily distant parent, and a closeted homosexual who, as it turns out, is involved with his male students and a family babysitter. Through narrative that is alternately heartbreaking and fiercely funny, we are drawn into a daughter's complex yearning for her father. And yet, apart from assigned stints dusting caskets at the family-owned "fun home," as Alison and her brothers call it, the relationship achieves its most intimate expression through the shared code of books. When Alison comes out as homosexual herself in late adolescense, the denouement is swift, graphic -- and redemptive.
Gathering Blossoms Under Fire
By Walker, Alice
From National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker and edited by critic and writer Valerie Boyd, comes an unprecedented compilation of Walker's fifty years of journals drawing an intimate portrait of her development over five decades as an artist, human rights
House of Earth and Blood
By Maas, Sarah J.
Bryce Quinlan had the perfect life -- working hard all day and partying all night -- until a demon murdered her closest friends, leaving her bereft, wounded, and alone. When the accused is behind bars but the crimes start up again, Bryce finds herself at the heart o
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell
By Clarke, Susanna
The international bestseller, finally in paperback!Time magazine's #1 book of the year 11 weeks and counting on the New York Times bestseller list Shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award Longlisted for the Booker prize A Book Sense pick People Top Ten Books of the year Salon.com Top Ten of 2004 New York Times Notable Books of the Year Christian Science Monitor Best Fiction 2004 Nancy Pearl's Top 12 Books of 2004 Washington Post Book World Best of 2004 San Francisco Chronicle Best Books of 2004 Chicago Tribune Best of 2004 Seattle Times 25 Best Books of 2004 Atlanta Journal-Constitution Top 12 Books of 2004 Village Voice "Top Shelf" Raleigh News & Observer Best of 2004 Rocky Mountain News critics' favorites of 2004 Kansas City Star 100 Noteworthy Books of 2004 Fort Worth Star-Telegram 10 Best Books of 2004 Hartford Courant Best Books of 2004 Susanna Clarke's brilliant first novel is an utterly compelling epic tale of nineteenth-century England and the two very different magicians who, as teacher and pupil and then as rivals, emerge to change its history.
Lady Susan.
By Austen, Jane
A collection of three lesser-known works by one of the nineteenth century's greatest authorsThese three short works show Austen experimenting with a variety of different literary styles, from melodrama to satire, and exploring a range of social classes and settings. The early epistolary novel Lady Susan depicts an unscrupulous coquette, toying with the affections of several men. In contrast, The Watsons is a delightful fragment, whose spirited heroine - Emma - finds her marriage opportunities limited by poverty and pride. Meanwhile Sanditon, set in a seaside resort, offers a glorious cast of hypochondriacs and spectators, treated by Austen with both amusement and scepticism.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world.
Leadership in Turbulent Times
By Goodwin, Doris Kearns
In this culmination of five decades of acclaimed studies in presidential history, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Doris Kearns Goodwin offers an illuminating exploration of the early development, growth, and exercise of leadership.Are leaders born or made? Where does ambition come from? How does adversity affect the growth of leadership? Does the leader make the times or do the times make the leader? In Leadership, Goodwin draws upon the four presidents she has studied most closely - Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Lyndon B. Johnson (in civil rights) - to show how they recognized leadership qualities within themselves and were recognized as leaders by others. By looking back to their first entries into public life, we encounter them at a time when their paths were filled with confusion, fear, and hope. Leadership tells the story of how they all collided with dramatic reversals that disrupted their lives and threatened to shatter forever their ambitions. Nonetheless, they all emerged fitted to confront the contours and dilemmas of their times. No common pattern describes the trajectory of leadership. Although set apart in background, abilities, and temperament, these men shared a fierce ambition and a deep-seated resilience that enabled them to surmount uncommon hardships. At their best, all four were guided by a sense of moral purpose. At moments of great challenge, they were able to summon their talents to enlarge the opportunities and lives of others. This seminal work provides an accessible and essential road map for aspiring and established leaders in every field. In today's polarized world, these stories of authentic leadership in times of apprehension and fracture take on a singular urgency.
Mad Honey
By Picoult, Jodi
A soul-stirring novel about what we choose to keep from our past and what we choose to leave behind, from the New York Times bestselling author of Wish You Were Here and the bestselling author of She's Not ThereOlivia McAfee knows what it feels like to start over. Her picture-perfect life - living in Boston, married to a brilliant cardiothoracic surgeon, raising their beautiful son, Asher - was upended when her husband revealed a darker side. She never imagined that she would end up back in her sleepy New Hampshire hometown, living in the house she grew up in and taking over her father's beekeeping business. Lily Campanello is familiar with do-overs, too. When she and her mom relocate to Adams, New Hampshire, for her final year of high school, they both hope it will be a fresh start.
The Measure of Our Lives
By Morrison, Toni
At once the ideal introduction to Toni Morrison and a lovely and moving keepsake for her devoted readers: a treasury of quotations from her work. With a foreword by Zadie Smith."She was our conscience. Our seer. Our truthteller." --Oprah WinfreyThis inspirational book juxtaposes quotations, one to a page, drawn from Toni Morrison's entire body of work, both fiction and nonfiction--from The Bluest Eye to God Help the Child, from Playing in the Dark to The Source of Self-Regard--to tell a story of self-actualization. It aims to evoke the totality of Toni Morrison's literary vision. Its compelling sequence of flashes of revelation--stunning for their linguistic originality, keenness of psychological observation, and philosophical profundity--addresses issues of abiding interest in Morrison's work: the reach of language for the ineffable; transcendence through imagination; the self and its discontents; the vicissitudes of love; the whirligig of memory; the singular power of women; the original American sin of slavery; the bankruptcy of racial oppression; the complex humanity and art of black people. The Measure of Our Lives brims with elegance of style and mind and moral authority.
Mexican Gothic
By Moreno-garcia, Silvia
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * "Its Lovecraft meets the Brontes in Latin America, and after a slow-burn start Mexican Gothic gets seriously weird." - The Guardian ONE OF TIMES 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME * WINNER OF THE LOCUS AWARD * NOMINATED FOR THE BRAM STOKER AWARD . ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, NPR, The Washington Post, Tordotcom, Marie Claire, Vox, Mashable, Mens Health, Library Journal, Book Riot, LibraryReads An isolated mansion. A chillingly charismatic aristocrat. And a brave socialite drawn to expose their treacherous secrets. . . . From the author of Gods of Jade and Shadow comes "a terrifying twist on classic gothic horror" (Kirkus Reviews) set in glamorous 1950s Mexico.. After receiving a frantic letter from her newly-wed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom, Noemà Taboada heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside. Shes not sure what she will find - her cousins husband, a handsome Englishman, is a stranger, and Noemà knows little about the region. Noemà is also an unlikely rescuer: Shes a glamorous debutante, and her chic gowns and perfect red lipstick are more suited for cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing. But shes also tough and smart, with an indomitable will, and she is not afraid: Not of her cousins new husband, who is both menacing and alluring; not of his father, the ancient patriarch who seems to be fascinated by NoemÃ; and not even of the house itself, which begins to invade Noemis dreams with visions of blood and doom. Her only ally in this inhospitable abode is the familys youngest son. Shy and gentle, he seems to want to help NoemÃ, but might also be hiding dark knowledge of his familys past. For there are many secrets behind the walls of High Place. The familys once colossal wealth and faded mining empire kept them from prying eyes, but as Noemà digs deeper she unearths stories of violence and madness. And NoemÃ, mesmerized by the terrifying yet seductive world of High Place, may soon find it impossible to ever leave this enigmatic house behind.. "Its as if a supernatural power compels us to turn the pages of the gripping Mexican Gothic." - The Washington Post. "Mexican Gothic is the perfect summer horror read, and marks Moreno-Garcia with her hypnotic and engaging prose as one of the genres most exciting talents." - Nerdist. "A period thriller as rich in suspense as it is in lush 50s atmosphere." - Entertainment Weekly
Mrs. Dalloway
By Virginia, Woolf,
Mrs. Dalloway chronicles a June day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway-a day that is taken up with running minor errands in preparation for a party and that is punctuated, toward the end, by the suicide of a young man she has never met. In giving an apparently ordi
My Life as a Rat
By Oates, Joyce Carol
"A painful truth of family life: the most tender emotions can change in an instant. You think your parents love you but is it you they love, or the child who is theirs?" --Joyce Carol Oates, My Life as a RatWhich should prevail: loyalty to family or loyalty to the truth? Is telling the truth ever a mistake and is lying for one's family ever justified? Can one do the right thing, but bitterly regret it? My Life as a Rat follows Violet Rue Kerrigan, a young woman who looks back upon her life in exile from her family following her testimony, at age twelve, concerning what she knew to be the racist murder of an African-American boy by her older brothers. In a succession of vividly recalled episodes Violet contemplates the circumstances of her life as the initially beloved youngest child of seven Kerrigan children who inadvertently "informs" on her brothers, setting into motion their arrests and convictions and her own long estrangement. Arresting and poignant, My Life as a Rat traces a life of banishment from a family - banishment from parents, siblings, and the Church - that forces Violet to discover her own identity, to break the powerful spell of family, and to emerge from her long exile as a "rat" into a transformed life.
The New Annotated Frankenstein
By Shelley, Mary
Two centuries after its original publication, Mary Shelley's classic tale of gothic horror comes to vivid life in "what may very well be the best presentation of the novel" to date (Guillermo del Toro) ."Remarkably, a nineteen-year-old, writing her first novel, penned a tale that combines tragedy, morality, social commentary, and a thoughtful examination of the very nature of knowledge," writes best-selling author Leslie S. Klinger in his foreword to The New Annotated Frankenstein. Despite its undeniable status as one of the most influential works of fiction ever written, Mary Shelley's novel is often reductively dismissed as the wellspring for tacky monster films or as a cautionary tale about experimental science gone haywire. Now, two centuries after the first publication of Frankenstein, Klinger revives Shelley's gothic masterpiece by reproducing her original text with the most lavishly illustrated and comprehensively annotated edition to date.Featuring over 200 illustrations and nearly 1,000 annotations, this sumptuous volume recaptures Shelley's early nineteenth-century world with historical precision and imaginative breadth, tracing the social and political roots of the author's revolutionary brand of Romanticism. Braiding together decades of scholarship with his own keen insights, Klinger recounts Frankenstein's indelible contributions to the realms of science fiction, feminist theory, and modern intellectual history -- not to mention film history and popular culture. The result of Klinger's exhaustive research is a multifaceted portrait of one of Western literature's most divinely gifted prodigies, a young novelist who defied her era's restrictions on female ambitions by independently supporting herself and her children as a writer and editor.Born in a world of men in the midst of a political and an emerging industrial revolution, Shelley crafted a horror story that, beyond its incisive commentary on her own milieu, is widely recognized as the first work of science fiction. The daughter of a pioneering feminist and an Enlightenment philosopher, Shelley lived and wrote at the center of British Romanticism, the "exuberant, young movement" that rebelled against tradition and reason and "with a rebellious scream gave birth to a world of gods and monsters" (del Toro) .Following his best-selling The New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft and The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, Klinger not only considers Shelley's original 1818 text but, for the first time in any annotated volume, traces the effects of her significant revisions in the 1823 and 1831 editions. With an afterword by renowned literary scholar Anne K. Mellor, The New Annotated Frankenstein celebrates the prescient genius and undying legacy of the world's "first truly modern myth."The New Annotated Frankenstein includes:Nearly 1,000 notes that provide information and historical context on every aspect of Frankenstein and of Mary Shelley's lifeOver 200 illustrations, including original artwork from the 1831 edition and dozens of photographs of real-world locations that appear in the novelExtensive listings of films and theatrical adaptationsAn introduction by Guillermo del Toro and an afterword by Anne K. Mellor 250 color and black-and-white illustrations
The Night Watchman
By Erdrich, Louise
Based on the extraordinary life of National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich's grandfather who worked as a night watchman and carried the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota all the way to Washington, D.C., this powerful novel explores themes of love and death with lightness and gravity and unfolds with the elegant prose, sly humor, and depth of feeling of a master craftsman.Thomas Wazhashk is the night watchman at the jewel bearing plant, the first factory located near the Turtle Mountain Reservation in rural North Dakota. He is also a Chippewa Council member who is trying to understand the consequences of a new "emancipation" bill on its way to the floor of the United States Congress. It is 1953 and he and the other council members know the bill isn't about freedom; Congress is fed up with Indians. The bill is a "termination" that threatens the rights of Native Americans to their land and their very identity. How can the government abandon treaties made in good faith with Native Americans "for as long as the grasses shall grow, and the rivers run"?Since graduating high school, Pixie Paranteau has insisted that everyone call her Patrice. Unlike most of the girls on the reservation, Patrice, the class valedictorian, has no desire to wear herself down with a husband and kids. She makes jewel bearings at the plant, a job that barely pays her enough to support her mother and brother. Patrice's shameful alcoholic father returns home sporadically to terrorize his wife and children and bully her for money. But Patrice needs every penny to follow her beloved older sister, Vera, who moved to the big city of Minneapolis. Vera may have disappeared; she hasn't been in touch in months, and is rumored to have had a baby. Determined to find Vera and her child, Patrice makes a fateful trip to Minnesota that introduces her to unexpected forms of exploitation and violence, and endangers her life.Thomas and Patrice live in this impoverished reservation community along with young Chippewa boxer Wood Mountain and his mother Juggie Blue, her niece and Patrice's best friend Valentine, and Stack Barnes, the white high school math teacher and boxing coach who is hopelessly in love with Patrice. In the Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich creates a fictional world populated with memorable characters who are forced to grapple with the worst and best impulses of human nature. Illuminating the loves and lives, the desires and ambitions of these characters with compassion, wit, and intelligence, The Night Watchman is a majestic work of fiction from this revered cultural treasure.
Parable of the Sower
By Butler, Octavia E.
When unattended environmental and economic crises lead to social chaos, not even gated communities are safe. In a night of fire and death Lauren Olamina, a minister's young daughter, loses her family and home and ventures out into the unprotected American landscape. But what begins as a flight for survival soon leads to something much more: a startling vision of human destiny... and the birth of a new faith.
Play It As It Lays
By Didion, Joan
A ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, Play It as It Lays captures the mood of an entire generation, the ennui of contemporary society reflected in spare prose that blisters and haunts the reader. Set in a place beyond good and evil-literally in Hollywood, Las Vegas, and the barren wastes of the Mojave Desert, but figuratively in the landscape of an arid soul-it remains more than three decades after its original publication a profoundly disturbing novel, riveting in its exploration of a woman and a society in crisis and stunning in the still-startling intensity of its prose.
The Secret History
By Tartt, Donna
Donna Tartt, winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for her most recent novel, The Goldfinch, established herself as a major talent with The Secret History, which has become a contemporary classic.Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality their lives are changed profoundly and forever, and they discover how hard it can be to truly live and how easy it is to kill.
Shirley Jackson
By Jackson, Shirley
"The world of Shirley Jackson is eerie and unforgettable," writes A. M. Homes. "It is a place where things are not what they seem; even on a morning that is sunny and clear there is always the threat of darkness looming, of things taking a turn for the worse." Jackson's characters-mostly unloved daughters in search of a home, a career, a family of their own-chase what appears to be a harmless dream until, without warning, it turns on its heel to seize them by the throat. We are moved by these characters' dreams, for they are the dreams of love and acceptance shared by us all. We are shocked when their dreams become nightmares, and terrified by Jackson's suggestion that there are unseen powers-"demons" both subconscious and supernatural-malevolently conspiring against human happiness.
The Soul of a Woman
By Allende, Isabel
"When I say that I was a feminist in kindergarten, I am not exaggerating," begins Isabel Allende. As a child, she watched her mother, abandoned by her husband, provide for her three small children without "resources or voice." Isabel became a fierce and defiant little girl, determined to fight for the life her mother couldn't have.As a young woman coming of age in the late 1960s, she rode the second wave of feminism. Among a tribe of like-minded female journalists, Allende for the first time felt comfortable in her own skin, as they wrote "with a knife between our teeth" about women's issues. She has seen what the movement has accomplished in the course of her lifetime. And over the course of three passionate marriages, she has learned how to grow as a woman while having a partner, when to step away, and the rewards of embracing one's sexuality.
Sundial
By Ward, Catriona
"DO NOT MISS THIS BOOK. Authentically terrifying." - Stephen King A LibraryReads Top 10 Pick! STARRED review from Publishers Weekly! Anticipated and Recommended by Bustle, USA Today, CNN, i09, The Nerd Daily, LitReactor, GoodReads, LitHub, and more!Sundial is a new, twi
Their Eyes Were Watching God
By Hurston, Zora Neale
“A deeply soulful novel that comprehends love and cruelty, and separates the big people from the small of heart, without ever losing sympathy for those unfortunates who don’t know how to live properly.” —Zadie SmithOne of the most important and enduring books of the twentieth century, Their Eyes Were Watching God brings to life a Southern love story with the wit and pathos found only in the writing of Zora Neale Hurston. Out of print for almost thirty years—due largely to initial audiences’ rejection of its strong black female protagonist—Hurston’s classic has since its 1978 reissue become perhaps the most widely read and highly acclaimed novel in the canon of African-American literature.
To Paradise
By Yanagihara, Hanya
From the author of the classic A Little Life - a bold, brilliant novel spanning three centuries and three different versions of the American experiment, about lovers, family, loss and the elusive promise of utopia.In an alternate version of 1893 America, New York is part of
Where the Past Begins
By Tan, Amy
FROM NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR AMY TAN, A MEMOIR ON HER LIFE AS A WRITER, HER CHILDHOOD, AND THE SYMBIOTIC RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FICTION AND EMOTIONAL MEMORYIn Where the Past Begins, bestselling author of The Joy Luck Club and The Valley of Amazement Amy Tan is at her most intimate in revealing the truths and inspirations that underlie her extraordinary fiction. By delving into vivid memories of her traumatic childhood, confessions of self-doubt in her journals, and heartbreaking letters to and from her mother, she gives evidence to all that made it both unlikely and inevitable that she would become a writer. Through spontaneous storytelling, she shows how a fluid fictional state of mind unleashed near-forgotten memories that became the emotional nucleus of her novels. Tan explores shocking truths uncovered by family memorabilia - the real reason behind an IQ test she took at age six, why her parents lied about their education, mysteries surrounding her maternal grandmother - and, for the first time publicly, writes about her complex relationship with her father, who died when she was fifteen. Supplied with candor and characteristic humor, Where the Past Begins takes readers into the idiosyncratic workings of her writer's mind, a journey that explores memory, imagination, and truth, with fiction serving as both her divining rod and link to meaning.
Whereabouts
By Lahiri, Jhumpa
Exuberance and dread, attachment and estrangement: in this novel, Jhumpa Lahiri stretches her themes to the limit. The woman at the center wavers between stasis and movement, between the need to belong and the refusal to form lasting ties. The city she calls home, an engaging backdrop to her days, acts as a confidant: the sidewalks around her house, parks, bridges, piazzas, streets, stores, coffee bars. We follow her to the pool she frequents and to the train station that sometimes leads her to her mother, mired in a desperate solitude after her father's untimely death. In addition to colleagues at work, where she never quite feels at ease, she has girl friends, guy friends, and "him," a shadow who both consoles and unsettles her. But in the arc of a year, as one season gives way to the next, transformation awaits.
Wolf Hall
By Mantel, Hilary
In the ruthless arena of King Henry VIII's court, only one man dares to gamble his life to win the king's favor and ascend to the heights of political powerEngland in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years, and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe opposes him. The quest for the king's freedom destroys his adviser, the brilliant Cardinal Wolsey, and leaves a power vacuum. Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell. Cromwell is a wholly original man, a charmer and a bully, both idealist and opportunist, astute in reading people and a demon of energy: he is also a consummate politician, hardened by his personal losses, implacable in his ambition. But Henry is volatile: one day tender, one day murderous. Cromwell helps him break the opposition, but what will be the price of his triumph? In inimitable style, Hilary Mantel presents a picture of a half-made society on the cusp of change, where individuals fight or embrace their fate with passion and courage. With a vast array of characters, overflowing with incident, the novel re-creates an era when the personal and political are separated by a hairbreadth, where success brings unlimited power but a single failure means death.
Yellowface
By Kuang, R. F
White lies. Dark humor. Deadly consequences ... Bestselling sensation Juniper Song is not who she says she is, she didn't write the book she claims she wrote, and she is most certainly not Asian American - in this chilling and hilariously cutting novel from R.F. Kuang, the #1 New